UNCW to charge fees for people giving gifts

Giving a gift to the University of North Carolina Wilmington will now come with a fee, university trustees decided Thursday.

By Pressley BairdPressley.Baird@StarNewsOnline.com

Giving a gift to the University of North Carolina Wilmington will now come with a fee, university trustees decided Thursday.The board of trustees unanimously voted to implement two new fees on gifts to the university beginning next fiscal year at a joint meeting of the business and external affairs committees. The fees are intended to create a new revenue source for the fundraising arm of the school, ramping up advancement efforts, senior administration staff told trustees.A 5 percent gift fee will be applied to any gifts to the school that are non-endowment gifts. A 1.25 percent endowment administrative fee will be applied to any gifts to the school that are endowment gifts. The thought process behind implementing the fees, said Chancellor Gary Miller, is to make UNCW's "fundraising operation much more productive.""For a university this size, we were way underfunded in advancement," Miller told trustees. "One of the things that we had to get was some growth in the advancement budget."UNCW also decided to put gift fees in place to compensate for a decrease in state-appropriated dollars for fundraising, said Charlie Maimone, vice chancellor for business affairs.Revenue from the new fees would be used only for more fundraising efforts, Maimone said. In the first year, Maimone said he expected the fees to bring in about $500,000. That funding would go toward new software to track fundraising efforts, positions in fundraising campaigns and alumni relations, and expansion of annual giving programs.Seven other UNC-system schools have gift fees, Maimone said, including East Carolina University, UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State University, UNC-Asheville, N.C. Central University, N.C. A&T University and Appalachian State University. East Carolina, for example, has a 3 percent gift fee and a 1.1 percent endowment administrative fee.Several trustees questioned how fundraising staff would bring this information to donors. Maimone said university advancement staff would sit down with each donor to explain the fee and the thought process behind it. Marla Rice-Evans, associate vice chancellor for university advancement, called it an "open-door, open-phone policy.""We will spend endless time, as much as is required, to go through this with everybody," she said.Trustees also had their own suggestions to alleviate any donor pushback. Trustee Gary Shipman asked the advancement staff to reexamine the fees annually to make sure that they actually were increasing fundraising dollars. Otherwise, Shipman said, some donors could view the fees as "nothing more than a tax."Trustee Wendy Murphy asked for strong communication with donors that stressed the positive of the fees."(The fees are) a way for long-term planning for the future of the university in raising money," she said.